Affiliate marketing is one of the various ways to make money online by promoting products or websites to earn a certain percentage as commission from sales made. The sales are made via web traffic. This simply implies that money is made from sales of the product being promoted. What you need to know is that services or products you promote are provided by others and not necessarily you. The only duty you are required to perform is to provide a marketing or sales outlet. So, let’s learn how to earn from affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing is not a get-rich-quick-scheme, so you should not expect millions instantly; this does not mean that people fail in making money through online affiliate marketing. If you want to earn from affiliate marketing, you need to understand how it works and whether it is truly for you.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Wikipedia defines Affiliate Marketing as a marketing practice where a business rewards one or more affiliates for each sale made by the affiliate.
The major thing in this business is that you get rewarded by helping to promote the product or service of a business. For instance, if you sign up for the affiliate program of Tips and Ticks HQ and promote its products, you get a certain percentage which is your commission whenever you send any visitor to the site and they make a purchase.
Affiliate marketing can be said to be one of the cheapest and quickest ways to make money online since it involves no products creation of any kind. All you need to do is to link up a buyer and seller; once the sale is made, you earn your commission.

How to do Affiliate Marketing?

The first thing to do is to join an affiliate program then select the products you intend to sell. The owners of the products would provide you with an affiliate code you can use for referring traffic to the main site. Also, you will be offered banners, text links and several forms of creative copies in which you just copy and paste the code on your own site to refer traffic. Any interested customer who clicks on the links from your website will be redirected to the main site where the product is sold and if they pay for the product or subscribe to a program/service and indicate you as the referral, you get a certain percentage as commission.
Your performance can be tracked by sellers through your affiliate ID and other affiliate software used. You also possess a real-time access to all commission and sales stats. Also, in making commission, you don’t always need to sell products because various affiliate programs employ different terms of payment like 
Pay Per Click (PPC) – You make money online depending on the number of visitors redirected by you to the website of the Merchant from your own site, whether you make a sale or not.
Pay Per Sale (PPS) – The merchant pays you a certain percentage of the price of sales made after a purchase is completed.
Pay Per Lead (PPL) – Once a visitor provides their contact info on the merchant site, you instantly make money online.

Why should you consider being an Affiliate Marketer? 

This business is known to be the fastest growing and best marketing techniques on the internet. Enlisted below are few reasons to consider this to earn from affiliate marketing:
Free of Cost: Affiliate marketing involves zero investment. Marketing any product online is relatively inexpensive, so the business functioning is cost effective since it was created by someone else. Also, you don’t need to hire anyone or have an office.
No customer support: This obviously is not necessary since you aren’t the person who created the products.
No shipping or storage: This is certainly not your headache because it would be handled by the seller if needed.
Passive income: If you have a normal daytime job, you can continue earning a fixed income. On the other hand, you earn from affiliate marketing steadily and even when you are not online at times.

Work comfortably from your home: If you earn from affiliate marketing regularly, you would have no need to go to work every day. You have the chance to work at home.
Global market: You can reach a lot of people around the world and earn from affiliate marketing.